This invention relates to a spiker vehicle which can sense the location of spike holes in tie plates of a railroad track road bed and an associated method for locating and/or spiking tie plates.
When initially making a railroad track, as well as when repairing a pre-existing railroad track, it is often necessary to use a spiker vehicle. Such a vehicle, which may also bring a rail to proper gauge, inserts spikes into spike holes in the tie plates, thus securing the tie plates to the railroad ties and, in turn, securing the rails to the ties.
Tie plates generally have 4 spike holes on each of two sides, one side being disposed on the field side of a rail and the other side being disposed on the gauge side of the rail. Depending upon the particulars of a given section of the track, one can spike in various patterns using fewer than all 8 spike holes in a given tie plate.
Often spiker vehicles are used which will spike tie plates along the left and right rails of the track at the same time. Such a vehicle generally requires 3 workers on it. Two persons perform the time-consuming task of lining up the spikers (devices which insert spikes into spike holes) with the spike holes and causing the spikers to spike when properly positioned. One of those same persons drives the vehicle along the rails, whereas a third worker loads spikes in the machine for passage in chutes to the various spikers (often 4 spikers, field side and gauge side spikers for each of right and left rails). This is a labor-intensive operation and attempts have been made to automate various aspects of the process for improved productivity.
The following patents are noted:
______________________________________ Patent No. Inventor Issue Date ______________________________________ 3,745,930 Dieringer July 17, 1973 3,753,404 Bryan, Jr. August 21, 1973 3,753,405 Bryan, Jr. August 21, 1973 3,942,000 Dieringer March 2, 1976 4,131,067 Newman et al December 26, 1978 4,554,624 Wickham et al November 19, 1985 ______________________________________
The two Bryan patents disclose spike driving and positioning systems with an electro-optical device for locating spike receiving holes.
The Dieringer '930 patent shows an automatic hole finder which uses reflective light to automatically drive a spike through a hole. The reflective light is sensed and the hole is located prior to the automatic spiking.
The Dieringer '000 patent shows a device for positioning railway maintenance machines using a laser and an optical receiver to sense the edge of a tie plate. It also indicates that the device may be used as a hole finder for finding spike holes.
The Newman et al patent, co-invented by an inventor herein, discloses a spike driving machine with a hole sensing device.
The Wickham et al patent, assigned to the assignee of the present application, and hereby incorporated by reference, discloses a system for measuring, gauging, and spiking of tie plates.
Although the above and other spiking machines have been used for spiking purposes, the reliability of arrangements to automatically find the spiking holes has been generally unsatisfactory. Indeed, to the knowledge of the present inventors, no company has marketed a spiker vehicle which will automatically find spike holes within a tie plate. Without the ability to automatically find the holes within a tie plate, the spiking process has continued to be relatively labor-intensive since, prior to activating a spiker, a worker must line the spiker up in the proper position just above the spike hole.